The present invention disclosed herein relates to an apparatus and method for treating a substrate, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for cleaning a substrate using sound wave energy.
Electronic devices such as semiconductor memory devices and flat display devices include a substrate. The substrate may be a silicon wafer or a glass substrate. The substrate includes a plurality of conductive patterns and a plurality of insulation patterns for insulating the conductive patterns. The conductive patterns and the insulation patterns are formed through a series of processes such as exposing, developing, and etching processes.
The processes include a process of removing impurity particles. For example, since impurity particles on the substrate may contaminate the patterns and cause defective patterns, an impurity removing process is necessary. Impurities can be chemically or physically removed from a substrate. In a chemical impurity removing method, the surface of a substrate is treated using a chemical. In a physical impurity removing method, impurity particles adsorbed on a substrate is removed by applying a physical force.
However, since recent highly-integrated semiconductor memory devices have 1-μm or less patterns, allowable impurity particle sizes of substrates are very small. Thus, it is difficult to remove small impurity particles from substrates using typical substrate cleaning methods.